Joe Sola / I found some Bic pens by the railroad tracks

The Happy Lion is very pleased to present an exhibition with Los Angeles based artist Joe Sola featuring the debut of a new video work, A Short Film About Looking. With his signature dry wit Sola’s latest work is a meditation on looking, as positioned by his characters: the artist, the patron and the gallery. A parallel narrative unfolds as we follow the morning of the two males: the first a scruffy artist type, the second a wealthy consumer. They pause to gaze—at seemingly random but formally chosen objects, shapes, colors. The differences in the lifestyles of these men are clear, and Sola builds this opposition with each edit. Narrative anticipation is fully and hysterically satisfied in a gallery—the obvious authority on looking, as “artist” meets “collector” and is arbitrated by “gallerist”. With an unparalleled ease of economy, Sola deftly dissects the politics of looking.

In addition to the video the exhibition will include several works on paper and a special one-night performance. Lush yet minimal, Sola’s recent watercolors convey humorous self-reference, as in the piece titled a painting of a book of ridiculous paintings and another me’n Kippenberger, and refer also to image production as in Industrial film. Sola’s highly physical performances use slapstick, live music, and Dada-ist abstraction to hilarious results. His newest piece, in collaboration with musician Michael Webster, will premiere on January 30th.

Joe Sola received his BA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and his MFA from Otis College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited extensively in the US and abroad. He has had solo shows with the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, at the Atlanta College of Art and at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, among others. Recent group exhibitions have included The Studio Sessions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Mixed Signals at the Cranbrook Art Museum, and Hard Targets: Masculinity and American Sport at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2009 he was commissioned to make a public sculpture for the Vancouver Biennale currently on exhibit until 2011. Sola has been invited to perform at the Armand Hammer Museum, and has had video screenings at The Getty Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Art. His work has been reviewed in publications such as The New York Times, Frieze, The Los Angeles Times, Artforum and Artpapers. Joe Sola lives and works in Los Angeles.